Was he or wasn’t he? Nazi bastard or button pusher?
Today’s guest on Dirty Water is celebrity author Davis Rensin, whose book All For a Few Perfect Waves laid out, without exaggeration or censure, the supersonic life of Malibu anti-hero Miki Dora.
Rensin transcribed one million words in the pursuit of the truth, relatively speaking of surfing’s great Voodoo God, a man who was style in the water, suits out of it, convertibles, Hollywood and movie stars.
Dora was also a thief, a scammer and an impossible loner who travelled the world chasing adventure and empty waves, his only real friend a King Charles spaniel called Scooter Boy.
A couple of years back, The New York Times ran a piece called The Long Strange Tale of California’s Surf Nazis which held Dora as the poster-boy for white supremacism in surfing.
Dora often used racial slurs and advised acquaintances to put all their money in gold before Mexicans and blacks poured over the borders and ruined the economy. While serving prison time, Dora (who had been convicted of both check and credit-card fraud) wrote to a friend that he loved American Nazis. Dora eventually relocated to apartheid-era South Africa.
In a 1975 interview with Phil Jarratt, Dora, who acted as a surf double on a couple of Hollywood beach films said, “The Jews come down to the beach, they shoot their movie, sell it to the Kikes and they all make a pile of money.”
Dora.
Was he or wasn’t he?
Nazi bastard or button pusher?
Let’s ask!
